


Closeness

by smolhombre



Category: Naruto
Genre: Adolescence is its Own Warning, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Feels, Gen, Genuine Love & Affection are the Only Kinks Here Folks, Growing Up, Healing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Non-Linear Narrative, Temari POV, Temari-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: Temari grows up, one way or another.
Relationships: Gaara & Kankurou & Temari, Nara Shikamaru/Temari
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	Closeness

Kankuro’s head is as fuzzy as the peaches that were in the Mizukage’s congratulatory gift, and nearly as pink. Temari is expressly instructed not to eat anything in the basket, of course, but the little hairs on the fruit draw her eye more than once regardless. People eat them like that? They don’t tickle?

She’s allowed to hold Kankuro if she is very still and sitting on her Mother’s lap, and tonight climbs into the warm folds of her robes without invitation and grabs for her brother imperiously. When she presses her mouth down to the top of his head in an experimental buss, she nearly squeals in delight.

“Soft!”

The swell of her mother’s stomach is firm against Temari’s back, her chuckle gentle on Temari’s temple. Temari kisses the bump through her mother’s nightdress before the ANBU escort her to her room.

🍃

The Fourth doesn’t tell Temari that her mother is dead, but Temari is smarter than she wants him to know. 

Gaara is the last thing her mother touched, and Temari wants to touch him, too, and it will be like they can share her. She waits until Kankuro is wailing — teething and spitting mad more often than not, these days — so the guards are distracted as she sneaks into her mother’s room and pads over to the crib. Why was no one with Gaara now? Her mother would not have allowed that.

On her tippy toes on her mother’s cold bed, she peers down to the swaddle of blankets. Gaara has more hair than she can ever remember Kankuro having, red like the sun gets before the rainy season. His eyes are open, and his breathing is quiet. 

They look alike. They look like their mother. 

Her nose feels clogged up, her eyes burn. She reaches down. 

“I’m Temari,” she whispers, polite like Yashamaru-jii likes her to be. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Gaara only offers a wet hiccup. Temari can  _ almost _ reach him.

The door opens. Before Temari can wrench backwards, her hand is swallowed in something too dark to see that  _ burns _ , dragging a sob from her chest heavier than she knows what to do with. The Fourth clamps down on her other arm, the biting grip iron and implacable. She twists uselessly between the vice in Gaara’s crib and the Fourth’s calloused hand.

“You were told to stay out of here.”

“I’m s—”

“Shinobi follow orders.” The Fourth watches her cry and does not interrupt her excuses. He doesn’t acknowledge them, either. Gaara wails in his crib, and some of the ANBU begin to fidget in the corners of the room.

“Wait,” the Fourth snaps. He doesn’t look away from her. His grip shifts.

He breaks her fingers with a clinical sort of dispassion, clean and sharp, before letting her drop to the floor. 

“Free yourself. Don’t make me do this again.”

🍃

Her hands are wet to the elbows. One of them moves better than the other, which hurts sometimes even when she knows it really doesn’t, and shines bone-white in the light. Her hands are wet, and warm, and there’s a heavy weight at the top of her head. It digs some of the hairpins into her scalp hard enough to bruise.

Baki-sensei removes his hand from the crown of her hair before she can ask him to do so. He is not the Fourth, and not her Father, but he took the time to know her. When she refused her kenjutsu lessons, he simply fit her for a harness for her first fan. He showed her how to get the bloodstains out of her shirt until the scar tissue and calluses built up on her back with scant a warning to be faster and smarter than whoever tries to get close to her first. He does not talk about the Fourth in front of them, ever.

Baki-sensei hates children, but kept them from starving to death until Temari learned to feed them herself. He’s honorable. She tolerates his hands when she can. 

He leans down next to her. “Easy, right?” His voice is quiet, but not soft. “This is how you cut it up. Watch.”

🍃   
  


Her first visit to Konoha is, to say the least, unpleasant. Temari never imagined having to take the chuunin exam more than once, never imagined a better, even longer distance fighter that could  _ touch her without touching _ — but at least the Fourth is dead.

🍃

They roast a goat when the three of them make chuunin, as if it were a high holiday and not something expected of them. Baki-sensei is already planning their jounin exams — but he is also the one to insist on a special meal. 

Temari helps the kitchen butcher it like Baki-sensei once showed her how to. Gaara watches silently from the doorway. He doesn’t join them to eat any, when it’s done. Kankuro, drunk on some Kumo sochu pilfered from the Fourth’s old reserves, slings an awkward arm over her shoulders as they set the table. Temari nearly vomits under the weight of it.

Almost, but doesn’t. The Fourth is dead. Kankuro wouldn’t hurt her, even if he could. Temari watches Gaara’s back shrink its way down the hall. Now, even he probably wouldn’t.

For the first time, no one wants her dead or maimed more than any other stranger would in her line of work. The goat and couscous taste better than they should under that weight, and she slips some sochu herself when her brother isn’t looking.

On their way back from the exams in Iwa, Baki-sensei made stilted chatter with the genin team from Getsu until their paths diverged near what used to be Yugakure. Usually terse with them and even more so with outsiders, he gave them a rare verbal lesson as they scouted a clean stream to settle by for the night.

“Diplomacy,” he grunted, “is necessary. Sometimes.”

In her bedroom, an untouched stationary set sits on an untouched writing desk — a birthday gift from the Council, embossed with the family seal superimposed atop Suna’s. The chair is uncomfortable. The paper is stiff in her hands, the pen heavy.

_ Diplomacy. _ She eyes the new chuunin vest hooked on the back of her door and writes a letter. When she’s finished, Temari scratches over the Fourth’s old seal. She scrawls her name underneath her request instead, and spends the rest of her evening coaxing a hawk down in their rookery that can stand the humidity in Konoha.

🍃

“The scar on your arm…” Shikamaru holds her in place across the clearing, one eye shut against the blood leaking from the gash on his temple. “Why is it different than your others?”

There’s no weight in her bonds — no temperature, no texture, just stillness. The feeling is still novel, but her strategy isn’t. Temari hasn’t fought  _ against  _ his shadow since their chuunin exams. Caught in them now, she sags her full weight into their grip and feels her lip curl at his answering, exerted grunt. It could be the light, but it looks like Shikaku-san is smiling from his spot under a nearby oak.

The shadow locked to her feet adjusts her stance like he’s about to pull her into a split. When she growls in warning, he stops. From her periphery, the shadow on her wrist begins to shrink back.

“You don’t like when people touch it.”

“People  _ don’t  _ touch it,” she corrects him. He looks up to her face, his mouth a flat line — and one day, this won’t be enough, but today it is. Shikamaru’s concentration, already on her scar, slips further. She kicks a spray of dry, red dirt into his face. The shadows fall away completely, and they charge each other again.

Temari accepts Shikaku-san’s dinner invitation after she and Shikamaru come to a draw. She has a whole side of their chabudai to herself, and afterwards two thick slices of kuri youkan Yoshino-san slides her way with a wink and a soft nudge. She agrees to come back before packing her things to leave.

🍃

Gaara is Kazekage for two years and four months before Temari can put her hand on his shoulder, her throat clogged, her vision a little blurry. The fiery drag she expects doesn’t come. She sees the scar shine in the overhead light as she pulls away. 

Back in her apartment, Temari picks up the letter on top of her worn writing desk, re-reading it just because she can before sealing it into the scroll with the rest. There’s a doodle of some antlers in one of the margins. Next to it is the scratched through outline of an hourglass. 

The dates are already on the calendar pinned to her wall, her bags halfway packed. More often than not, they stay that way no matter where she is. 

_ Diplomacy _ , she hums to herself, settling down at the worn seat to write a reply that won’t make it to Konoha until after she does herself. There’s something soft in the weight attached to the word, soft as the creases worn into the letter, soft as the promises they talk around.

🍃

Wisps of smoke from Shikamaru’s cigarette carry forward on the breeze, tickle her neck and face. When the fawn reaches out to the feed in Temari’s cupped palm, its muzzle is soft as a peach.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was the piece I submitted for the _A Leaf in the Wind_ zine last year. It was a challenge to write something in < 1,500k words (which I still didn't exactly manage OTL) but the experience itself was great! You can't order the zine anymore, but I'm trying to share what I can now with things as they are in the world ;) 
> 
> I am working on getting their letters to each other posted as either a sequel or chapter two, but it's further down in the queue as I work on some other things...stay tuned ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated :D <3


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